A new study published in Human Brain Mapping reports that elderly individuals who were obese or overweight had significantly less brain tissue than individuals of normal weight.
The study reviewed the brain images of 94 people in their 70s. They were followed for five years, and it was discovered that clinically obese people had 8% less brain tissue, while simply overweight people had 4% less brain tissue compared to normal-weight humans.
“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts, while those of overweight people looked 8 years older,” study leader Paul Thompson said. “This is the first study to show physical evidence in the brain that connects overweight and obesity and cognitive decline.”
From Men’s Health:
Your being in shape could be worth a cool $60,000. According to an Ohio State University analysis, obese people have a lower net worth than slimmer counterparts. OSU researcher Jay L. Zagorsky found that for whites at least, there was a very strong correlation between total net worth and body mass index, or BMI.
In one 2000 sampling, whites with a BMI of 24 – within “normal” range – were worth $100,000, while those with a BMI of 42 – obese – were worth only $40,000. (For unknown reasons, the health and net wealth link did not seem to apply to African-Americans). And these figures don’t take into account the whopping cost of assorted medical events associated with being sedentary: $50,000 and up for heart bypass surgery; an annual, average, per patient cost of $10,000 associated with Type 2 diabetes (as a result of heart disease, eye damage, stroke, kidney disease, and amputation).
